Sorolla Again

Here are two more paintings by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida: same subjects, I assume brother and sister, but contrasting scenes captured. The boy wears nothing but the girl's straw hat, while she is primly dressed for a Victorian bathe. The French impressionists wittered on about capturing ephemeral moments of light and shadow - their excuse for selling unfinished paintings of static cornfields -, but Sorolla sat on a beach and practised what they preached. He caught the sky and the sea in different moods and people working or children playing against this constantly shifting backdrop. His subjects aren't posed. They're oblivious of him. He must have worked swiftly to catch such telling snapshots of life. Having captured a magic moment, why should he titivate it with superfluous polish? CLICK, CLICK.